Читать книгу Weeding the Flower-Patch - Flora Klickmann - Страница 5

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A few days later my friend Ursula rang up to ask how things were going my end.

I gave her the headlines.

“You can’t possibly go on like this,” she exclaimed. “What will happen to the afflicted upstairs if you get ill?”

“I don’t intend to get ill.”

“But you probably will, all the same. I’ve met your good intentions before, and know how often they’ve led you astray. Hold on a minute.”

She left the phone to speak to her sister, then returned with the news: “We’ll both arrive to-morrow. We’re free now, as our Dutch friends left us last week. We’ll reach you by the last train. Virginia will take charge of Miss Smith’s internals and Mrs. Brown’s knees; and I’ll boss the kitchen. You will then be free to entertain the next scrounger who plants herself on you.”

This was a great relief to me. I had been anxiously wondering if I really could hold out, with no assistance anywhere in sight. The elderly among the former domestic workers were planning to get the rest which they certainly deserved; the middle-aged were beset with claims and worries in their own homes; the young were looking in other directions. The outlook had been rather depressing.

It was fortunate for me that my war-time evacuees were all personal friends, and though it meant strenuous work at times, I was spared the undesirable etceteras which accompanied so many of the poor children from town slums, making night as well as day hideous for many a distracted housewife. And no Keating’s to be had!

Sometimes I had a helper in the kitchen; sometimes none. Nearby munition and other factories needed all the workers the district could supply. But I am certain it is better to be over-worked, rather than a person of leisure, during war years such as we have known; it allows one no time to sympathize with oneself.

I was not able to take more than two, or at most three, invalids at a time; but these provided a sufficiency of exercise, and trained me to sleep with one eye open.

Knowing that when the sirens wailed, the plaster casing must instantly be adjusted on a broken leg that was not yet quite reliable; or that a patient who could not get up must be fortified with tea and talk—such-like duties made me forget to dissolve into a quaking blanc-mange, as I might otherwise have done when the noise started.

One invalid said: “Directly those sirens sound, my stomach turns completely inside out!” Fortunately for me, she was speaking figuratively, not literally. But I admit my own anatomy also played queer tricks at the wrong time.

One night, when I felt panic threatening, I said firmly to myself: “Are you a coward, or are you not? Answer me that!” And then I laughed (and was cured) as I suddenly remembered a very good lady whose reply to every suggestion with which she disagreed—and she disagreed with most!—was this: “I only ask: Is it Christian? or is it not Christian? Answer me that!”

Very difficult sometimes to answer!

The arrival of Virginia and Ursula was a great relief to me. It is not always the continuous routine that gets on one’s nerves, so much as the never-ceasing interruptions when one is single-handed; the phone and the door-knocker being especially trying!

“Please, m’m, mother says, could you give her a piece of strong brown-paper? She’s sending a pudding to my brother.... Yes, he’s still abroad.”

Strong paper is scarce, but a piece is found at last; the boys at the front are entitled to all we can give them. Small girl departs, after we have exchanged friendly talk about mother’s health, father in the shipyard, baby’s progress in teeth, and the latest news from brother in Germany.

Upstairs, I make the invalid’s bed—as far as the pillows—Knock! Knock!

“Please, mother says, have you some strong string?”

Equally scarce: but a handful of oddments must suffice. Less conversation this time.

The invalid’s bed now reaches the tuck-in and its day-time spread—Knock, Knock!

“Please, mother says, do you happen to have such a thing as a bit o’ sealing wax?”

Fortunately this is near to hand. No more time for polite nothings; I don’t even say “Tell her she is quite welcome.”

The invalid is now inserted carefully between the sheets; her hot-water bottle put where it is needed, her boudoir cap arranged “Just so”; and she is about to express the customary thanks, but instead exclaims: “Preserve us all! There’s mother again!” as the knocker is heard.

“Please, mother says, can you lend her your scales? We haven’t none, and she isn’t sure if the parcel is heavy enough!”

I only hope the pudding reached the lad eventually, for his mother must have spent an exhausting time!

All summonses to the door are not so long-drawn-out as this, of course. But no housewife needs to be told of the curious affinity that seems to exist between the door-bell downstairs and urgent duties upstairs, especially on one’s busiest days.

The advent of Ursula in the kitchen, close to the back-door, was a great saving in steps for me, in addition to still more valuable assistance.

As soon as indoor chores allowed, we three were out inspecting the miscellaneous collection of vegetation that had cheerfully settled on me, apparently anxious to stay. Like many another garden, my flowers had to take care of themselves during those weary years, when food, and still more food, was the aim of every farmer and gardener (and still is). Thus it was that in the portion not suitable for food crops—too steep, too stony, too shallow, or too shaded—the flower-beds were left, ignored and untended, the weeds soon realizing their opportunities.

Not that my place has ever been a weedless paragon. In all the years I’ve known and loved it, we have never got it really clear in any particular year, but were full of good resolves for the next spring, when the frost would be out of the ground, and so it would be simple to eradicate unwanteds before they grew too high. Yet every spring weeds appeared above the soil, old residents as well as new-comers, and some were soon chatting over the garden boundary to their relatives and friends on the other side, while ploughing, digging and planting were going on elsewhere.

Virginia walked off, searching a long paved path for items she had possibly planted in the past. Occasionally she bent down to disentangle some little gem from the too-hearty embrace of a sturdy interloper.

Ursula merely stood and gazed around in silence.

“It’s a sad sight, isn’t it?” I said at last.

“Sad? why it’s a lovely sight, a most beautiful sight,” she replied emphatically. The look on her face told me she meant it. “You haven’t been in London since the devastation. You haven’t seen where your own house used to stand and the garden you made—gone entirely. Nor the heart-breaking heaps of ruins, once homes and trees and flowers. You can’t think what the sight of this profusion here means to us!”

“Don’t forget that much of it is weeds.”

“I don’t mind if it is. I never realized till this moment how much I like weeds!”

“Even bindweed? What I’ve heard you say about bindweed!”

“Yes, even bindweed. If I had seen a sight like that——” pointing to a big white blossom that had climbed through the centre of a high laurel hedge, and was nodding gaily to the world below, “if I had come upon that plucky thing among London wreckage I believe I should have wept from emotional gratitude for its courage, and the reminder of happier days.”

“Then this doesn’t suggest a wilderness to you? It would to many people. Though I’ll confess it doesn’t to me; but I’m peculiar!”

“Anything but a wilderness. It’s a glorious expanse of green things growing—some of them in the wrong place perhaps, but all of them shouting that there is still life and loveliness left on earth, instead of universal tired ugliness.”

“You don’t mean you would leave the place like this?”

“Not exactly; but I wouldn’t turn out everything that might be called a weed.”

The gardener appeared just then. “Miss Ursula thinks we might leave most of the weeds,” I told him.

“Glad to hear it, miss; I’m not standing still for a job at the moment. Only they’ll be worse than ever next year. They’re a tough gang!”

Virginia had returned from her exploration. “I’ve found the Crete candytuft; I was afraid it might have expired; and it soon will if it isn’t rescued from smotherers. There is still a darling little pink bloom left.”

Ursula went off to greet it.

“And do you know you have several fine York and Lancaster rose bushes, growing in the very middle of the path further along, evidently seedlings from the big one, and all their roots under the flat stones! And what is the name of that tall plant blocking the way, that looks like horse-radish leaf, but isn’t?”

“Elycampane. That’s another seedling that planted itself there. Flowers something like smaller editions of the big sunflower. A grand plant, but it obstructs the traffic where it is.”

“Hadn’t we better make a start with the weeding right away? There’s plenty to be done!”

Weeding isn’t always so simple as it sounds, not by any means. There are two main alternative methods, neither being entirely popular, as both necessitate work.

In one case, you dig up the whole of a bed removing every growing thing, heeling in the desirables elsewhere, till space is ready to receive them, and carting the undesired to the bonfire. This is the gardener’s way when he feels like it, or has the time—which isn’t often! But when he does devote himself to the job, the beds eventually appear coiffed, though, alas! it isn’t a “perm”. A little rain soon brings up more weeds.

The alternative course is to pull up and dig up every item you don’t recognize as a well-born garden inhabitant. Or else to pull up and dig up merely the few things you do happen to recognize as weeds. This is usually the visitors’ method. And the beds thereafter resemble nothing so much as the lawns when the badgers have made a night of it digging up their beloved pignuts; or when the cows have got in, and churned up anything they can lay foot on.

Fortunately, most visitors soon remember letters they must write, and quickly down tools!

Virginia and Ursula are in a class apart. Not only do they know the garden and the history and preferences of most of the plants, but they really love it, and through the years have grown to look upon the inmates as personal friends.

One bed at a time was our rule. We began on a miniature thicket. I should explain that as everything on this hillside is on the slope—a steep one as a rule—the borders and beds, as well as the woods and fields, all run uphill, or down, depending on the way you look at them. And the garden soil is propped up at intervals with low stone walls, built with the rocks got out of the ground when the flower beds were made.

But for these walls and buttresses, the soil would wash down to the river—in time. As it is, a big cloud-burst, or super-torrential rain, has on several occasions swept not only the garden soil, but the shallow-rooted plants, and vegetables, and seedlings, clean out of the garden through the boundary railings, down over grass lawns, till stopped by the huge wall which holds up this part of the hill to prevent the wood below from being washed out.

Clumps of meadowsweet occupied the top of the bed we were attacking, and branches were also lying on the ground, prostrate after heavy gales and rain which had done a good deal of damage in the summer. Groups of the meadowsweet had arranged themselves all down one side of the bed; so tall were they that they shut off to some extent one’s view of the farther borders.

“How does all this come here?” Virginia asked. “Do you want it to remain? I should have thought there was enough ramping down by that far brook to satisfy even you!”

“You’ve forgotten the spring that rises in the orchard just above us, and rims down well under the path beside this bed. The seeds of the outlying meadowsweet soon found it, and took possession; but I’m afraid it can’t stay there.”

We lifted armfuls of the sprays, heavy with unripe seed, from the ground. Underneath we found an ancient lavender, its old branches sprawling about, but still sending up spikes of bloom, where it could get them through. But what did please me was the sight of clumps of green leaves, which the Madonna lily throws up in the autumn. Those lilies had disappeared several years before. I concluded they had died; Madonna lilies have been somewhat temperamental in this garden. I was too busy to look for them, and finally had forgotten them. Yet there they were, striving to do their best under most trying conditions. The tough lavender branches had made a kind of tent over them, saving them from the crushing weight of the meadowsweet.

How we worked to release them! clearing away the corn mint surrounding them—another moisture-lover that must have scented the little spring running down below. Talk about water divining! I was surprised however that the lilies had not objected to the proximity of the water. But they were not actually over it, and it was not stagnant water—which most plants detest.

Another little favourite which I thought had disappeared was the wild pansy. At one time it was about the place in large masses. Then, for no accountable reason, it disappeared. I have had various wild flowers do the same thing. I had searched the fields and woods for the dear little heart’s-ease, without success. Yet here it was again, mixed up with marigolds and nettles, roses and dandelions, its cheerful little face almost laughing at me. There is something very appealing about the small yellow and white flowers, with their touch of mauve, that is not so apparent in the large garden pansies, beautiful as they are. But little things—especially little growing things—are usually more attractive to me than big, over-developed show plants.

Farther down we came on a group of small but sturdy youngsters growing, not in the bed, but in the path. Several inches high, they were unlike any of the things in the borders. The gardener identified them as seedling lobelias. But how did they get there? I had had no lobelias on the premises since before the war! Some of these tinies had dark bronze-green leaves; some were light green; no two were exactly alike.

“But why have they chosen that stony path of all places?” Ursula asked. “If the garden hadn’t been so neglected they would have been trodden flat. And in any case lobelias don’t like to be too dry. Yet that path——”

“Is above the trickling spring,” I reminded her. And in some mysterious way the water must have attracted the little clutch of seeds when they floated over to us from—we knew not where! The nearest garden to mine was some distance away, and, as it happens, they had never grown lobelias!

Next day I potted up those seedlings, eight of them. They have since bloomed luxuriantly, and are still going strong.

Town dwellers are at a disadvantage, compared with country folks, in the matter of garden surprises. The town plot may be cherished with the utmost care, and the things one plants may (or may not) develop according to plan. But neither during Spring-cleaning or Autumn manœuvres is one likely to come upon much that is unexpected. Even the weeds bear a strong family likeness to the weeds next door, or are merely relatives of those we omitted to clear out earlier.

Rural gardens fare better. Seeds may be wafted a considerable distance from other gardens; and people who love growing things in the country—whether on a large or a tiny scale—have a far wider variety than is possible in towns, where impure air, insufficient sunshine, and sour soil kill off all but the most robust and courageous of plants. And some of these have to be renewed so often as to make town gardening an expensive hobby. I know whereof I speak!

The flower beds around country cottages often contain some cherished items of rare or sentimental value; also old-fashioned plants seldom mentioned in commercial lists. But this omission does not daunt the out-of-dates. They flourish happily in the plot of ground that may have been their home for generations. And in many cases they launch their children out into the world, to make new homes elsewhere for themselves.

And they do.

Also, I have known kind neighbours to come and plant in my borders, when I was not there, some little treasure they were dividing in their own garden, certain that I should value it.

There are so many mysteries in Nature’s methods, which I shall never solve, though possibly wiser heads than mine already know the whys and wherefores.

For years wild strawberries were seldom seen on my land; two little clumps were all I could find, and they did not increase. Then one sad day a glorious wood, containing a large number of beech trees, was cut down on an opposite hill across the river, to make way for larches.

The following year, seedling strawberries began to appear all over my place—not only in the borders, but in the hedgerows; the paths; with the moss and ivy on the tops of walls; among the rocks; anywhere a few inches of soil afforded anchorage. They didn’t seem to care whether it was in the open or the shade; they flourished in any position, though the fruit developed best in full sun.

An American gardening paper recently told of experiments being made with the strawberry (presumably the small wildling) as a ground cover for lawns; and it was pronounced satisfactory. Anyone who saw how they try to smother me might well call them ground cover.

The sudden appearance of wild strawberries after a beech wood is down is as curious as the sudden appearance of the rose-bay willow-herb after a forest fire, where it starts at once to clothe the desolation with beauty. It is often called the Fire-weed; and in America it is also known as Blooming-sally.

Foxgloves, again, appear by the thousand after mixed woods on these hills have been felled. Yellow broom is another feature of the denuded hillsides. But this loveliness vanishes when the space is planted with larches.

Have the seeds been waiting patiently in the soil till the chance came for their release? If so, for how many years?

It may be argued that the seed was not in the ground, but settled on the wood-ash after the forest fire, or among the leaf-mould of the forest trees, from neighbouring plants, finding the soil-conditions congenial. But this does not explain why many thousands of strawberry seeds should have settled and rooted all over my land, only after the distant beeches were cut. That the seed must have come in small clouds is certain, there was so much of it. But——

Nature’s mysteries, so often inexplicable, will soon vanish, unless some check is put upon the indiscriminate spoliation of our lovely land, for military, industrial and other schemes, which seem ever on the increase, without necessarily adding to the nation’s welfare.